I think people don’t realize it exists. If you’re just walking down the street, a co-op looks exactly like any other apartment building.

More than 2,000 non-profit housing co-ops — from buildings with four units to complexes with hundreds of apartments — exist in Canada. There are 263 in B.C. alone. Most were created with federal and provincial funding from the 1970s to the 1990s, according to the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C.

A non-profit co-op is like a democratic country: residents have a vote in how it’s run as long as they live there. And because it’s not trying to make money, the co-op can charge lower rates than average private rents.